texvox

Black coffee has really grown on me over the years. I still have a sugared-up milk-filled drink once in a once in a while, but it's very few and far between. Give me that jet-black rocket fuel instead 🤣

Things like this do make me wonder (genuinely) what protections Fiverr has in place to ensure AI is not used in un-savory or un-ethical ways on the platform? I would assume any company going as all-in on AI as Fiverr has probably had some meetings about this. There are a lot of AI-based scams out there in the ether outside of the platform already. With the rapid advancement of these tools they'll find their way here on no time flat, and I don't think that a simple policy requiring people disclose their use of AI is going to cut it.

Also a voice actor here, and I know way more than I ever thought I would about both male performance issues and heavy machinery. Because of my vocal print I'm hired for a lot of dude-related stuff and blue-collar projects. I'm the primary voice for a large male performance clinic across the US and several heavy machinery dealers and manufacturers in and outside of the US. If asked to I could probably write a quick thesis paper on the causes and common treatments for ED as well as standard and new manufacturing practices for both augers and excavator buckets 🤣

Yes I did! And that happened about 3 weeks after my 3rd child was born, so you can imagine the adrenaline pumping as I stood in the parking lot wondering what in the world I was going to do. Crazy start to an interesting career path.

Money is also good, considering my bills don't accept "good will" as payment 🤣

I also really enjoy eating pies. So my business is kinda' my pie money too.

I spend much of my day recording voice-overs out of this box/coffin. The remainder of my time is spent marketing/corresponding at my extremely cluttered desk to the left, outside the frame (I'd probably lose some friends if anyone saw that mess of a desk).

I primarily jumped into the world of voice-over specifically after being directed to do so in prayer. I'd never heard of this industry before or contemplated running a business before hearing the words "Voice Over" loud and clear when praying about my next career move about 6 years ago. Strange reason to many I am sure, but I've learned over many long years after asking many questions that I can trust God's direction on this sort of thing. It's been a wild ride. Long-term, my personal goal is to voice projects that impact the abused and voiceless in the world - giving a voice in particular to victims of human trafficking around the world, especially children. I have a handful of organizations that I have aimed to work with since day 1, and over the last 6 years I've been able to voice numerous projects impacting the issue. As far as the day-to-day, I'm first interested in honoring God through my best work ("Do everything as to the Lord" - if I wouldn't do my best for Him, what's the use in giving my work to anyone else?), and secondarily in providing for my wife and 4 kids. I also drive an outrageously large and thirsty truck; gotta' feed the tank. And I like to eat pie, and pay my bills.

Send me a direct message with a link to your primary voice gig. I don't often have folks coming to me asking for female VO since I'm a male voice talent, but some of my repeat clients do periodically ask if I can refer them to female talent. I'd be happy to check out your gig and potentially send some your way.

I'm on the same page as you. Head down, get to work, continue to expand my voice-over business elsewhere. My buyers here will receive the best I can offer at the price point I'm extending, and they'll hopefully be delighted by the work. Fiverr has been, for me, a great place to rack up plenty of work without auditioning while I take measured steps to continue to grow my direct business without feeling the stress of having to make my direct business explode yesterday. So I'll keep riding the wave as long as I can until I no longer need to, or can, include Fiverr in my business plan. It is still pretty disappointing to see the platform continually roll out duds with their new products that seem to be conceived by people who have never sold a thing in their lives and then double-down instead of receive constructive feedback. Why take the wiser path of listening to the people who actually sell on the platform who would be willing to help turn the ship around? But what you can you do. And yes, coffee.

Fiverr did a great job of creating a system that buyers and sellers have to overcome rather than one that makes everything easy. Add to that a TOS full of things that (at least for my industry - voiceover) just don't exist outside of Fiverr, with Fiverr putting the onus on sellers to explain their system rather than educating buyers themselves. And then further compound the problem with the fact that a lot of folks just don't read anything - your gig, your FAQ, nothing - before trying to place an order and you've got a recipe for a Looney Tunes episode about freelancing. his leads to a lot of unnecessary time spent correcting buyer misunderstandings about the platform. Makes sense it would lead to frustrated buyers that may look elsewhere.

I pay $29 and unfortunately received the email. Hopefully they skip over you. Maybe it's their way of trying to get you to stay past June 🤪

The poll was very straightforward until I noticed the option to identify as a potato, which caused a major existential crisis. A few hours later I felt confident to supply my answers once I determined that I was not, in fact, a potato (unless, as they say, you are what you eat - in which case I may be at least partly potato). All of the features of the Seller Plus premium subscription I signed up for - at $29 per month at the time - are "nice-to-haves" at best that I can largely live without. The one exception to this, for me, is the Request To Order feature, which I think should be an option available to all sellers as a basic part of doing business and not something buried behind a paywall. At this point RTO is the only feature that keeps me subscribed. I've given it some thought over the last 24 hours and I believe I'll stay subscribed simply to keep RTO, since I don't want to live my day-to-day life at the mercy of the myriad schedules and needs of global buyers in all kinds of time-zones. But I am not happy about it, and as I look at my total annual Fiverr fees for 2023 even before this increase it reinforces my commitment to working my way out of needing this platform in 2024.

Responding to messages while you're out is probably what lead to your positive outcome vs. mine. When I left for 10 days in November it was to go Ukraine to rebuild homes in the far east of the country with some friends. I kept the "All buyers can contact me" option off when enabling vacation mode as I knew I would have zero wifi and likely no cell signal so I couldn't respond to any messages. Otherwise my pre-trip prep was the same as yours - extend delivery mode, wind it down and wrap up projects before I left, although I didn't leave any in the queue since it was going to be 10 days out. That'll teach me to try and offer humanitarian aid abroad 🤷‍♂️ Even when I am not in that situation though, I prefer to truly unplug not have to connect to Fiverr daily to respond to buyer messages. I find it distracts me way too much from focusing on my wife and kids, and even when I'm by myself it takes my mind away from rest. With my direct business it's no big deal - away message takes care of it and I can check maybe once every 3 days to make sure I'm not missing big opportunities. Here on Fiverr that's apparently too much to ask.

My greatest accomplishment/highlight in Q1 was: greatly expanding my direct business outside of various platforms. Platforms are a great tool to have in the belt, but it's unpredictable and unwise to rely on them too heavily, and it felt nice to create some more "breathing room" in my business by continuing to diversify my sources. The thing I'm most grateful for in Q1 is: bouncing back closer to my average monthly earnings here on Fiverr after using "Vacation Mode" for 10 days in November literally nuked my gig (went from averaging $14k/mo and 25k impressions/week with a $17k peak in October to $2k and 1k impressions/week in November, $6k and 1.5k impressions/week in December). Getting back much closer to my old numbers which is great. I won't be using Vacation Mode ever again here on Fiverr. In Q2, I would like to improve: my overall business acumen. I'm not the most natural entrepreneur, but I'm growing every day. I'd like to improve my overall understanding of smart business practices in general. In Q2, I would like to accomplish the following in my professional life: work less, earn more. Continuing to raise my rates across all platforms as well as with direct clients to enable myself to be a bit increasingly more selective about the projects I take on while still meeting my income goals. In Q2, I would like to accomplish the following in my personal life: take the next steps toward first-time home-ownership.

Sorry that you had to learn this lesson in this way @desmond_aubery. As @visualstudios mentioned, low-budget clients can often be very difficult to work with. I take the position that not every low-budget client is necessarily a terrible experience waiting to happen, but you have to vet them to the moon and back before accepting a project from them. Because this is so difficult to do I no longer offer any discounts to first-time buyers here on this platform (or off really). Discounts are a luxury, not a right, which I reserve for buyers that I have a good working history with. A properly timed discount can be a great customer service gesture for an ongoing relationship, but if someone is coming to me on day 1 asking for the moon for nothing that tells me that this person at the very least devalues my services. And at the worst? Well, you got a little taste of that (although it can get much worse; trust me on this). When I first got into freelancing an experienced freelancer made a joke that I didn't understand at the time, but I completely get now. He said: $5000 client: "Sounds good; invoice paid." $50 client: "Before we get started, let me tell you about how this project is going to change both our lives..." Extremely cheap clients tend to make a habit of over-valuing their own importance while under-valuing yours. I've definitely found this to be true. You need them and they need you. Both sides need to see the value of the other or the project quickly becomes overly-lopsided in terms of give-and-take. If they're coming at you like a leech they may very well just be a leech. Hopefully this lesson drives some great results in your future though!

The biggest change I've made to my day-to-day operations to increase productivity for my business as a whole (including Fiverr, other platforms and my off-line direct clientele) is to limit the amount of time I spend working. I used to be the type of freelancer who worked "as many hours as it takes." While I thought I was "crushing it" by giving myself a long leash to work until projects were perfect, and I was proud to be "the hardest worker in the room," when I stopped and actually spent time auditing my days I realized that much more of my time than I thought was spent in distraction, or in working tirelessly to squeeze that last 1% out of a project before I delivered. In other words, spent inefficiently. At that point I resolved to work no more than 8 hours per day 5 days per week, and over time I have decreased my average daily working hours to 6, 5, and now about 4 hours on average. And now that I am working about 4 hours a day 5 days a week I am wildly more productive than when I was clocking in 8 hours a day 6 days a week. The reason? Setting a limit on the amount of time I can devote to something forces me to work much more diligently and use my time much more efficiently. Over the last 2 years of doing this I have found that I can accomplish as much or more in 4 quality hours of work per day, 5 days a week than I ever did working 8 sloppy hours per day 6 days a week. Simultaneously my annual business earnings have more than doubled during this same window.

It changes all the time for me. I'm one of those "I like everything" people - yep, even country. It also depends on what I need the music to do for me. Yesterday I was on a hurdy-gurdy kick. A few days before it was a ton of epic bagpipe tracks. Last week Lecrae and NF topped my personal studio charts. I slipped a few EDM tracks in there and even an aria or two (Don Giovanni - can't go too long without Sam Ramey's pipes in my ears). This morning? Running through some of my favorite Hootie & the Blowfish tracks. Darius Rucker is the real hero over here, motivating me to finish this coffee and get after it 😁

@lukesdesigns Like Ken I am also both TRS and PRO and I have had a 9 since the first day of rollout. Been bending over backwards to correct the "communication" problem the success score says that I have and getting a ton of great feedback and reviews since rollout and it hasn't budged.

Agreed! I can dig in a little too deep when it comes to exploring new avenues on Fiverr as well. And as we're both voice actors I'm sure you can agree it's a very nice feeling to have this kind of earning potential at our fingertips without having to go and audition for project after project. There's still a lot of potential here, but I'd encourage you to venture out into that uncharted territory too! There are opportunities all over the place. Case-in-point, I had someone knock on my door to campaign for a local position ahead of the primary elections at the start of this month. Through some conversation I found out she's a commercial director and producer, dropped my profession, swapped a business card and I now have a very enthusiastic lead in the neighborhood.

Yep. It’s going to be the same story on most of these platforms. Unfortunately in exchange for a piece of the pie they all take most of the “free” out of freelance and turn us into glorified employees without the benefits, begging for favor and hoping in things we can’t control. All the more reason to expand our direct businesses. I’ve really loved working on Fiverr and I’ll continue to do so but it’s become evident in the last year that getting too comfortable here has been my mistake.

I am a TRS and PRO seller with a score of 9. Screenshot attached from my dashboard at the moment. My supposed "negative impact" detractor is "Communication."

On top of some of the standard gig extras not being available, I am also seeing every custom gig extra I have ever offered showing up, including several that I deleted long ago.

I make sure to do what I need to "stay free." As a buddy of mine pointed out, the FREE in freelancer comes from not being tied to your business as you would to an employer. The business should work for you, not the other way around. On that note - I am unfortunately finding it more and more difficult to maintain this type of healthy connection to my business here on Fiverr as they continue to increase the pressure to prioritize the platform, but I am still able to do so at this point, albeit it not as much as with every other place I do business. This could look like: - Stepping away for a day or two when/if I need to. Or just because. If I want I can shoot out an email to my direct clients outside of Fiverr and a message to my repeats here on Fiverr to give them a heads up about my absence and just disappear for a day or two at the beach, or mountains, or to play games with my kids. - Saying "No" to a project or two you don't really want to work on. Unlike being an employee, everything that comes across your desk as a freelancer is an opportunity, not an obligation. Being able to decline work for any reason imaginable has been very freeing. - Exiting my studio for a few hours to play with my kids. Or inviting my kids into my studio/office to goof around for a little while. - Easing into my day with a bit of a late start. My kids are out of school for Spring Break here in the US so I slept in until 8AM just because. - Not wearing pants while I work. Yep. - Strength training 3x per week, and walking every other day. Keeping my body moving is a must to combat time spent at a desk or in my recording booth. - Blasting music once in a while in my studio. It's just me in here - who's going to complain?

I'm also a top rated seller, and Fiverr has also given me clearance to ask for reviews. But customer service can be quite fickle, and I've heard of people being told something is OK to do or say and suddenly being dinged for doing exactly that one day because one or two words were on the naughty list. I see where you're coming from though, and offering some vague guidance on at least understanding the system is a good thing. It is quite disappointing that Fiverr has rolled out their current system and doesn't seem to have given buyers much in the way of guidance on how to understand these changes. As usual, they change something and put the onus on us as sellers to make it work.